


Some Things Never Change

by wyomingnot



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyomingnot/pseuds/wyomingnot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie was just seeking some closure on the eve of her 50th birthday. She certainly hadn't expected *this*.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Things Never Change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [icepixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icepixie/gifts).



> This doesn't actually fit any of icepixie's specific prompts, but hopefully it does fit the spirit.

> _Hey, Fleischman! Can you believe it's been almost 20 years since you left Alaska? Well, 18. Almost. Whatever... My point is that you've been gone so much longer than you were here. Of course, now that I'm about to turn 50, five years doesn't seem as long as it did when I was 30._
> 
> _You were the first boyfriend I had who didn't die. Did I ever tell you that it turned out my mother had the same dead boyfriend curse? Doesn't matter. You didn't die. I'm really glad that you didn't die. Though, well, you did kinda crack up._
> 
> _I know we weren't actually together all that long, but I still think of you every now and again. Usually when I see someone new to town all bundled up in a ridiculous parka better suited to the actual Arctic._
> 
> _You saved my life on my 30th birthday. Did I ever properly thank you for that? I don't think I did. Thank you. I think it was when I woke up after surgery that I first started thinking of you as something other than just a thorn in my side._
> 
> _You were so unsuited to life in Cicely, but I think you eventually got the hang of it. I wish you had stayed around, even though it would've been awkward for a while after we split up._
> 
> _We were doomed to failure as a couple. Maybe if when you first got here I hadn't been with Rick and you hadn't been engaged… Maybe. Maybe not. But I was, and you were, and that's that._
> 
> _And now you're in New York, presumably. I don't know. I've thought a few times about Googling you, but I think I prefer not knowing._
> 
> _Wherever you are, whatever you're doing… I hope you are well._
> 
> _Take care, Fleischman._
> 
> _Maggie._

Maggie read the letter again, once more questioning her greeting. But she never really called him Joel, even when they were engaged. He was (and would always be) Fleischman. And “Dear Fleischman” was just too stupid.

She heaved a sigh as she folded the letter then stuck it in the envelope and sealed it. It was the last one she wrote. Only three letters to cover 20 years, and even three was pushing it. She'd debated writing a letter to Mike since the relationship had been so brief, but she figured that if she had the urge to write it at all that meant she had something to say. So she said it. 

“Okay, let's do this.” Maggie knelt in front of the small fire she'd started in the fireplace. It wasn't the Great River, but then again she wasn't actually a Native. And the recipients were all alive this time. And last time she sent her letters by river she almost died. Not that that was the river's fault. She figured sending the letters via fire was good enough. The point was the ritual. Writing the letters and sending them out to the universe.

She said goodbye one at a time to Chris, Mike, and Joel and watched as the paper burned. Eventually the tingling in her feet let her know that she'd spent long enough on her knees. She got up and dusted her hands off on her jeans. 

“Tomorrow you'll be FIFTY.” She meant to say it enthusiastically, but it didn't quite sound that way.

….

The next morning, Maggie slept in a little. Like previous milestone birthdays, she hadn't wanted a fuss; she figured taking the day off was enough. She stretched and yawned, closing her eyes again. Maybe she could go back to sleep for a bit…

“Are you planning on staying in bed all day? What kind of celebration is that?”

Maggie's eyes flew open as she sat straight up in bed. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, but she still saw Joel Fleischman leaning in her bedroom doorway.

“Fleischman?” She obviously wasn't awake yet. She rubber her eyes again and reached for her glasses. He was still there. “Why are you here?”

“I got your letter.”

“Am I hallucinating? I can't be hallucinating. I'm dreaming!” Maggie insisted. “I'm still asleep. That's it!”

“Sorry, O'Connell,” Joel said. “You're awake. And not hallucinating.”

“Isn't that the kind of thing a hallucination would say?”

“Fair point,” Joel admitted. “But wouldn't you be seeing me as I was in the past?”

That did sound reasonable, but. “How did you get my letter?”

“The last time you saw me, I was magically transported from the middle of the Alaskan wilderness to New York City. Do you really think I wouldn't get a letter sent by fire?”

“How do you know I sent it by fire?”

Fleischman reached into his pocket. He pulled out an envelope and tossed it to Maggie. It really was her letter, only now with distinct singeing around the edges. “Lucky guess,” he said.

“I think I need to be dressed for this conversation.” She glared at Fleischman and made a shooing motion. “If you don't mind?”

“Nothing I haven't seen before, O'Connell.” He shrugged.

“Not in almost 20 years. Go.”

He shrugged again and pushed off the door frame, then walked off.

“How is this my life?” Maggie asked the room, half expecting some kind of answer. After a minute she sighed, threw the covers aside and set about getting dressed so she could deal with Fleischman. “Happy birthday to me.”

…

There was coffee waiting when Maggie finally emerged from her bedroom. “Make yourself at home, Fleischman.”

“Like you weren't dying for it.”

“Not the point.”

“You're welcome.”

“So,” Maggie said as she settled down on the sofa with her coffee. “How's New York?”

Fleischman was slouched down in the armchair. He still managed to shrug. “I wouldn't know.”

“You don't live in New York?” Maggie boggled.

“Haven't been in a long time,” he said. “When I got back… everything had changed. Only no, it hadn't. Five years doesn't change New York, but five years in Alaska changed Joel Fleischman.”

“You definitely weren't the same jerk who thought I was a hooker when we met.”

“I apologized for that that night!” Joel insisted as he straightened out of his slouch.

“It left a lasting impression.”

“Is that why we spent my first year in Alaska endlessly snapping at each other?”

“Between your being completely bent out of shape over being dropped in the middle of nowhere and my having my nose out of joint from a bad first impression, yeah, pretty much.” Maggie agreed. 

“It's a wonder we ever got together. Actually together.” Joel huffed and ran a quick hand through his hair. It was nothing like it had been when he'd left, but it was neither stylish nor out-of-date. It was simply neat and well-groomed. The same could be said for his clothes. Weekend wear or really casual Fridays, but neat and not fussy. “Time heals all wounds?”

“Says the former New York doctor?”

“Still a doctor, just not in New York. But I'm still _from_ New York. The way you're still _from_ Grosse Pointe.” Joel paused. “Did you get the post card I sent after I left?”

“New York is a state of mind.” She didn't know why she remembered it. She hadn't seen it in ages, but she did still have it. Somewhere. “I never knew what it meant. I just assumed it meant you were back and back to your old life.”

“Not so much. I sent that when I was on my way out of the city. I wasn't even sure where I was going then. Just somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn't New York or Alaska. Turns out there's plenty in-between.”

With very little prompting, he told her about his years as an itinerant doctor when he spent months in towns smaller than Cicely. There was even a short time when he worked in heath centers serving migrant workers. Eventually he settled down.

“Fargo?” Maggie asked. “North Dakota? You, Joel Fleischman, have put down roots in Fargo, North Dakota?”

Joel smiled. “Yeah.”

“I am hallucinating,”Maggie said as she stood up. She started pacing. “Dreaming. Something.”

“So you can believe I got your letter sent by fire, but you draw the line at Fargo?”

“I don't know,” Maggie admitted, shaking her head as she plopped back down on the sofa. “And you still haven't told me why you're here.”

“You're assuming I came here on my own. That I decided, upon reading a crispy letter from you that I found on my table this morning, that I had to get to Cicely _right now_ to talk to you.”

“Well…” Maggie trailed off.

“I saw the letter. Sat down and read the letter. Said, 'huh' out loud. Then I sneezed. When I opened my eyes, I was sitting on your hearth, letter still in hand. I recognized where I was after a second. The room hasn't changed much in 20 years.”

Maggie didn't know how to reply. She looked down at the cup of coffee in her hands, but it offered no ideas. 

Joel raised his eyebrows, expecting a scathing reply. When none was forthcoming, he continued. “Okay, so the point of the letter was some kind of closure? Settling the past. Right?”

“Something like that.”

“You said you preferred not to know how I was doing. Maybe you were wrong about that?”

“Why do you think it has to be about you?” Maggie snapped. Fleischman had always been good at pushing her buttons.

“Wow. Same O'Connell.” Joel shook his head and pointed at her. “I didn't say that. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about both of us. I walked out of your life, and you never really knew what happened to me. And you did care, at some level. Maybe you didn't spend a lot of time agonizing or wondering, but somewhere in the back of your head you were thinking, 'whatever happened to Fleischman?' And it mattered. Enough for you to write to me. Enough for the letter to come. Enough to bring me here. But I don't think any of it would have happened if I didn't care and wonder back.”

“But you never…”

“Never wrote? Never called?” Joel asked. “No. Just the postcard. I knew you were okay here. You would be okay in the end. Cicely takes care of its own.”

Maggie titled her head and smiled. “Yeah. I've been okay. I've been _good_.”

“Still mayor?”

“How do you know about that?”

“You never Googled me, doesn't mean I never looked you up. I figured you were too busy with being mayor, and a pilot, _and_ a movie theater owner...” Joel trailed off and looked around. He snatched a pen and piece of paper off the coffee table, left there the night before. He started writing. “But if you can take the whole day off for your birthday, you probably have time for a friend.” He handed her the paper.

“What's this?”

“I know you have internet here. Surely you can recognize an email address, O'Connell.”

“That sounds like the Fleischman I knew.” Maggie rolled her eyes. “Okay. Email. I can do that.” She nodded. 

“Good.” Joel smiled. A proper smile. “Maybe you can come visit Fargo sometime. There's a big Viking festival in June you might like.”

Maggie couldn't help but smile back. “I think I would. Wow. Friends. I like it.”

“Me too.” 

Suddenly Fleischman sneezed, startling Maggie. She blinked, and he was gone. No puff of smoke, no flash of light. Just a sneeze and then nothing. She got up and walked around the house, but of course she was alone. 

“Okay. Maybe just a really intense hallucination,” she told herself, not quite believing it. But there was the coffee she definitely didn't make. And more telling, a piece of paper still clutched in her hand with an email address on it. She stared at the paper, expecting it to disappear just as Fleischman did. When it didn't, she walked over and set it under a paperweight on her desk. If it was still there later, she would write.

It was, and she did. 

**Author's Note:**

> [There really is a Viking festival in the Fargo area in June!](http://www.hcscconline.org/midwest-viking-festival/)
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> Thank yous to [redacted until reveals] for beta, advice, cheerleading, and hand-holding. It was greatly appreciated.


End file.
